Most times film-stuff. Other times other-stuff.

My Fantasy Awards Booking 2019

How Awards Season could’ve looked in a less imbecilic universe.

The BAFTAs were a week ago and, whilst still utterly perplexing in many a respect – BAFTA Winner, Bohemian arse-cumming Rhapsody – they could’ve been a lot worse. The 92nd Academy Awards are next week, assuming the beleaguered twits in charge of this year’s ceremony don’t just decide to cancel the whole thing at the last minute to stop all the complaints about their cack-handed ideas like a parent taking all of the kids’ toys away so they’ll stop arguing about who gets to play with what, and at least are working from the advantage of a marginally-better nominations slate than the BAFTAs (key word being “marginal”) so maybe they’ll also not be The Worst. And the Drunk Oscars were a month ago and, much like the Dover Boys of Pimento University, they drove me to drink. This year’s Awards Season has been especially interminable since, even more so than usual, the standardised nominee slate has been proudly ignorant of where the best cinema from those 12 months came from, which is true of almost every year given the Academies on both sides of the Atlantic having a bias and systemic disadvantage against genre pictures and minority/female cinema, but 2019’s Awards Season definitely feels like a tipping point. I mean, Bohemian dick-piercing Rhapsody is an AWARD-WINNING FILM and those awards are somehow not Razzies!

Still, in the absence of quality realistic chances to root for, we can at least fantasise a better nominee slate in some hypothetical more-just universe that doesn’t give me crippling panic attacks every single day no matter how much I try to avoid triggering phenomena – thanks a lot for this when I just wanted to watch Notting Hill, WWF. Three years ago, my friend (and writer so infinitely more talented than me that using the phrase “colleague” feels like an insult towards him due to it implying I’m even in the same profession) Kyle Turner fantasy-booked a better 2016 Awards Season than the one we actually got. Since I have no original bones in my body, I stole the idea and have done my own version of it everyyearsince. At least with this we can finally send off 2018 for good and look forward to brighter days so long as nobody remembers that Tom Hooper’s Cats is coming December 2019. As usual: no winners, no descriptors, still not seen everything, any rationale can likely be found in my Top20series or my BAFTA noms rundown, this is just a fun thought exercise.